There are a number of items that are either too heavy or unwieldy lift by hand or, for other reasons, need to be transported by vehicle. It may not be desirable or possible to place such items inside a vehicle, such as an ordinary family car for example. Such items include wheelie bins, bicycles, light weight off road trailers such as those used for garden waste and the like.
Wheelie bins may be heavy and it may be difficult to wheel them to the road or other rubbish collection areas particularly where long or steep driveways need to be traversed or where residents needing to move the bins are elderly.
There have been a number of proposals for towing devices for wheelie bins by vehicles. For example, Australian innovation patent 2007100062 in the name of Amaze Promotions Pty Ltd describes a device consisting of an arm which has a hook member at one end that is placed through the handle of a wheelie bin and an aperture at the other end which attaches to a spike on the toe bar. When used with this device the wheelie bin must be loaded very close to the ground making it difficult to control as the bin may tip over.
Another proposal is that of Australian patent application 16343/97 in the name of Kaden which discloses a wheelie bin towbar hitch comprising two arms disposed at right angles with spring-loaded pins for engaging the wheelie bin and the toe ball. Again this appears to suffer from similar problems in that the bin would have to be lowered to the ground and may tip over. Further the operation of the spring-loaded pins may be difficult for elderly people with arthritic hands.
Other proposals such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,376,051 in the name of Bacher and U.S. Pat. No. 7,735,850 in the name of Curran relate to trailer hitches and ball mounts which require the operation of cumbersome levers or fiddly pins.
The above references to and descriptions of prior proposals or products are not intended to be, and are not to be construed as, statements or admissions of common general knowledge in the art.